Twitter at a crossroads: Economic value vs. information value

Updated: Almost every day, it seems, we get further evidence of the dilemma at the heart of Twitter’s ongoing evolution from real-time information network into multibillion-dollar commercial media entity — and the latest is the furor over the company’s suspension of the Twitter account belonging to Guy Adams, a British journalist. As Jeff Jarvis and Dan Gillmor and others have noted, regardless of the details of this specific case, it seems like a defining moment for Twitter: the network that has bragged in the past about being the “free-speech wing of the free-speech party” now looks to be censoring journalists who criticize the company’s corporate partners. How the company decides to handle this incident will speak volumes about where Twitter’s future lies.

As my colleague Jeff Roberts has noted in his report on the case, Twitter says that Adams — a freelance journalist writing for The Independent who has been openly critical of NBC for the way it has handled its broadcast of the Olympics — breached the network’s terms of use by posting the email address of an NBC executive, Gary Zenkel. The journalist’s account was immediately suspended, without any notice (which appears to be a breach of Twitter’s own rules on how to handle such events), and Adams has since written a piece for The Independent in which he describes how he believes that “>this kind of censorship calls into question Twitter’s commitment to freedom of speech and other ethical principles:

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“Thanks to Twitter, and Google and every other medium dedicated to the free exchange of information, the world is supposed to have changed [and] that’s why, regardless of its comparative frivolity, NBC’s successful attempt to suspend a journalist from a social networking site sets an ugly precedent.”

Update: Adams said shortly after this post was published on Tuesday that his account had been reinstated by Twitter, and that the company told him in a letter it had “received an update from the complainant retracting their original request.”

Twitter’s general counsel Alex MacGillivray has posted an explanation of what happened on the company’s blog, and said that the approach it took was consistent with its “trust and safety” procedures — but he did apologize for the fact that a Twitter staffer alerted NBC to the tweet from Adams. As MacGillivray said:

We do not proactively report or remove content on behalf of other users no matter who they are. This behavior is not acceptable and undermines the trust our users have in us. We should not and cannot be in the business of proactively monitoring and flagging content, no matter who the user is — whether a business partner, celebrity or friend.

What makes this incident look particularly bad for Twitter is that Adams didn’t just post criticism of a random company and a personal email address for a random executive — he posted it about NBC, which happens to be one of Twitter’s corporate partners. The two co-developed and launched an official Olympics hub that curates and filters the stream of content appearing on Twitter about the Games, one of a series of similar efforts that Twitter has been rolling out around prominent events like the Olympics and NASCAR (the Twitter hub is also not available to users outside the U.S. because of licensing restrictions imposed by NBC).

These increasingly corporate-oriented ambitions, which we have written about a number of times at GigaOM, raise all kinds of issues for Twitter. As I’ve tried to point out, they bring the network into an increasingly competitive relationship with traditional media entities, as Twitter itself takes on more of the curation and filtering function they have traditionally filled. But the Adams case brings up another issue that is arguably even more important — and that is the potential for Twitter’s corporate interests and partnerships to sway its decision-making when it comes to what kind of speech it will tolerate. As Jeff Jarvis notes:

“The real issue here is that Twitter entered a business deal with NBC and its parent, Comcast, for the Olympics. That, in Adams’ word, puts NBC and Twitter in cahoots with each other. So now do other users have to worry about biting the hand that feeds Twitter?”

Free speech will collide with Twitter’s commercial interests again

Twitter was more than happy to announce that “the tweets must flow” when the network was being used by dissidents to protest and raise awareness about the evils of the corrupt Egyptian regime of Hosni Mubarak, but the NBC case brings those issues a lot closer to home. The company didn’t have a commercial relationship with Egypt or the Mubarak regime, so it was easier to make a clear-cut determination in that situation — the needs of those consuming critical information about a revolutionary event took precedence. In the Adams case, it feels as though Twitter has allowed commercial considerations to govern its behavior instead, or has at least allowed them to taint its decision making.

We’ve already seen growing dissent over Twitter’s crackdown on companies that are using its API, as it tries to control more of the content that flows through its network, and dictate where and how that content is consumed. Regardless of how Twitter sees itself, that kind of control is fundamentally the same approach as that taken by any media entity such as the New York Times. And as Jarvis points out, that element of control and the commercial considerations around it is bound to clash at some point with the way that people have come to see Twitter as a real-time information distribution system.

As Hunter Walk of YouTube pointed out recently, asserting more control over the network probably makes perfect sense from a financial and business-model standpoint, as Twitter tries to justify its estimated $8-billion market cap and satisfy its prominent venture backers. But those commercial interests could prove to be fundamentally at odds with the company’s previously stated goal of being an information-distribution network that cares more about free speech than commercial or political considerations.

Rightly or wrongly, users seem to see Twitter’s behavior in the Adams case as evidence that it is willing to throw free speech under the bus in order to maintain commercial relationships. If that isn’t the case (which I hope it isn’t), then Twitter needs to figure out how to repair that impression as quickly as possible — or risk jeopardizing the very thing that has gotten it to this point in the first place.

aside from getting a little publicity from the partnership, what exactly did twitter gain? They werent prominently advertised on NBC. Im a tad confused as to what exactly was gained from this venture aside from horribly bad press. furthermore, did twitter think this wouldnt get publicity? they did suspend a journalist, a person who has the most ears and eyes.

This is all a familiar story. Every social company has to navigate the tricky left turn that comes between building scale and achieving monetization. But the faster you try to take the curve, the higher the chance of plunging right through the guardrail. Lately, Twitter has been standing on the gas pedal.

Once upon a time, Twitter had a simple goal: to build the most useful social platform it could. Now, Twitter has a different objective: to be the most used social platform. Most useful vs. most used sounds like a subtle difference, but itâ€™s not. Becoming the most used platform requires Twitter to be not just an engine for discovering content but a place for consuming that content.

umm.. twitter is free… if you don’t like it.. umm.. leave? and if a company exec says.. “they tweeted an email address we need removed” – which would add MASSIVE amounts of spam to that email address.. and you can’t delete the tweet unless it’s in 30 seconds before it is archived.. the only other way to REMOVE the email address from downstream websites is to suspend the account. it’s a technical issue… twitter is free…. FREE TWITTER!!!!

This time they made the mistake of picking on a journalist. Does it mean this was a one off or simply that this is nothing new, just that not everyone else is in a position to go public and embarrass them?

The problem with these giants is that they are becoming more and more detached from who really makes them work… the average internet user.
Google is a case in point with its new privacy rules and its own invasion of peoples privacy with its street view collection of router details, accounts and passwords. Data it had excuse for being able to collect let alone collecting.
It’s changes to the search enines and the inbuilt biasing of searches is going to bite it back one day… a lot of people are upset with the “search within results” fiasco.

But there is an interesting question…. just how permanent are some of these organisations? Facebook appears to have peaked and to be on the down slope. How does twitter stand?
At what point will internet users grow up and smell the roses and ask what the point is of the countless hours they spend bragging about nothing on the internet?
The pursuit of the dollar is often the factor that clouds the issue and poisons the product.

Reblogged this on Ritter's Ruminations & Ramblings and commented:
This could get real interesting on how this is ultimately resolved. Twitter needs to maintain focus on their vision. The ability to monitor events in real time is a major value add.

By definition no corporate entity can play the social role of guaranteeing our civil rights and that includes free speech.

That is why, in the long run, corporate big-data-silo APIs like twitter, Facebook and Google+ will ultimately need to be flushed from the system in favor of open-socure federated APIs capable of supporting new more fundamentally organic democratic network base social structures !

Journalism is among unique professions, as it was specifically called into a protected space by the documents upon which the USA was founded.

Clearly, the Internet needs a new Internet.

It’s original GOVERNMENT-MANDATED design was to be a de-centralized communication resource that would maintain itself even when parts were taken over by an enemy. Perhaps we need an open-source Internet for social media, more of a “whack-a-mole” approach like the original design.

After all, we all know, and see it proven again and again, “absolute power corrupts absolutely.” In our modern era, it’s corporate power that is the corrupter.

Compared to what? Suspending a baker’s or a ditch digger’s or a student’s or a politician’s?

“Journalists” are so special they deserve different treatment? Ohhh.. be careful, hurt their feelings and they’ll throw all sense of journalist objectivity out the window and come after you. They better put their pretty little heads together to come up with a workable definition of “journalist”, if that’s the case.

Silly.

A “journalist’s account” is an entry in a database. Rules of the road are the rules of the road. If the ruler of the road blows it, they undo it. (as they have done).

But only a fool should be confused about who owns the road and the database and the entry and every utterance made on the road. And the answer to that doesn’t matter if a journalist, a celeb, a wannabe pundit or sage selling books, a politician or a nameless faceless member of the masses is involved.

“If you don’t pay for the service, you are the product.” The modern TOS binds the users, not the issuer.

I think it’s more about the idea than necessarily the culture of journalism itself. The practice of journalism is the embodiment of the First Amendment and censorship of a journalist is theoretically a violation of the First Amendment.

It’s everyone’s right to chastise a reporter or journalist, but it is never ever ok to censor them.

Almost every day, it seems, we get further evidence of the dilemma at the heart of Twitter’s ongoing evolution from real-time information network into multibillion-dollar commercial media entity — and the latest is the furor over the company’s suspension of the Twitter account belonging to Guy Adams, a British journalist. As Jeff Jarvis and Dan Gillmor and others have noted, regardless of the details of this specific case, it seems like a defining moment for Twitter: the network that has bragged in the past about being the “free-speech wing of the free-speech party” now looks to be censoring journalists who criticize the company’s corporate partners. How the company decides to handle this incident will speak volumes about where Twitter’s future lies.